Will the city’s dump trucks end up in garages, affecting garbage collection? The municipal chief auditor has slammed the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) for buying spares-parts for its fleet of garbage vehicles worth crores of rupees without any proper approvals for the past five years. The auditor has also asked the civic body to immediately halt new orders and streamline the process by inviting tenders in a time-bound manner.
“The civic standing committee had authorised the solid waste management (SWM) department of the BMC to procure spare parts for a period of three years between 2003 to 2005 by inviting tenders. But the SWM department continued the trend even after that from 2005 till 2011 without any authority or approval to the same companies that had received tenders. This is a multi-crore scam and many officials are involved in it,’’ Kamlakar Naik, Sena corporator from Kurla who brought the issue into limelight told DNA.
“This is a serious lapse and daylight robbery by the BMC officials. Who has authorised them to continue procuring parts of vehicles?’’ he added.
The municipal chief auditor PG Pisolkar, in his report last week, slammed the BMC and said that the deals undertaken by the SWM were “objectionable.”“A sanction to extend the existing contracts after 2005 had been given temporarily by additional commissioner (city) till new approvals were given, but the new approvals never happened and the buying of spare parts continued at exorbitant rates. The BMC has now asked the department to stop procuring such spares and frame a policy in a time-bound manner,’’ Pisolkar said.
Terming the entire episode as a ‘’serious lapse,’’ he said in the audit report that after examination it had been found that the buying of spare parts had been done at exorbitant rates and not as per the set laws.
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